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June 23, 2010

AT&T says it is taking a cautious approach to its femtocell rollout since it introduced the Cisco-made device in March at CTIA Wireless 2010.

The wireless carrier said femtocell use will count toward its new caps on data use, as it has for all customers but those on unlimited plans only.

AT&T added that about 96.3 percent of its MicroCell users have Wi-Fi routers in their homes, which is better suited to home mobile data usage in the first place.

Overall, Femtocells can take traffic off the macrocellular network. AT&T Mobility's femtocell traffic still counts toward its total data usage as the femtocell is primarily designed to enhance the user's voice call quality experience.

So far, no less than 13 wireless operators have confirmed commercial launches of femtocells, including Vodafone Spain, AT&T Mobility, Softbank in China and Japan's KDDI.

Spain is Vodafone Group plc's second commercial offering. The operator initially launched femtocell service in its U.K. headquarters in October 2009.

Globally, the femtocell market continues to grow and should reach about 48.7 million femtocell access points and about 114.2 million mobile users accessing networks through femtocells by 2014, according to a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media.

“Overall, healthy growth is anticipated throughout the forecast period with femtocell unit sales reaching 25 million in 2014 alone,” Informa said.

“Femtocells allow the vast, and ever increasing, amount of data being consumed indoors to be offloaded from the macro network. Not only does this significantly improve the femtocell user's mobile broadband experience, but it also improves the experience of outdoor users as well by freeing up network capacity in the macro cellular segment,” the Femto Forum said.

Dimitris Mavrakis, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media says “the femtocell segment is experiencing some kind of maturity with many of the largest operators in Asia, North America and Europe now offering services. Global operator demand for femtocells is undeniable and recent femtocell standards can only enhance this situation even further."

"As mobile data traffic continues to skyrocket, femtocells look set to become a vital component of next generation mobile broadband deployments and this is reflected in the increasing interest in enterprise, metropolitan and LTE models,” added Mavrakis.

In the wireless industry, a femtocell is a small cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. It connects to the service provider’s network via broadband (such as DSL or cable. Current designs typically support 2 to 4 active mobile phones in a residential setting, and 8 to 16 active mobile phones in enterprise settings.

A femtocell allows service providers to extend service coverage indoors, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable. Although much attention is focused on WCDMA, the concept is applicable to all standards, including GSM, CDMA-2000, TD-SCDMA, Wi-MAX and even LTE solutions.

For a wireless operator, the attractions of a femtocell are improvements to both coverage and capacity, especially indoors. This can reduce both capital expenditure and operating expenses. Providing a better service to end-users in turn reduces churn. There may also be opportunities for newer services as well.

Mobile users benefit from improved coverage and potentially better voice quality and battery life.

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Source: AT&T.